


comfort calling late

by van_driver



Category: Captain - Fandom, Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anal Sex, Body Horror, Boypussy, Bucky with a vagina, Dissociation, Future Fic, Gunshot Wounds, HYDRA Trash Party adjacent, Injury Recovery, M/M, Medical Trauma, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Oral Sex, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Slow Burn, Traumatic Injury, Vaginal Sex, boypussy!Bucky, brief Bucky/OC, drug use in a medical setting, handwavey surgery, please protect yourself if this could be triggering, see story notes for further explanation, some elements taken from Civil War, this is not trans!Bucky or intersex!Bucky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-06-02 04:27:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6550969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/van_driver/pseuds/van_driver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve finds out the extent to which Hydra experimented on James Barnes, and it changes things for both of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, I want to be clear that this is absolutely not a story about trans or intersex Bucky (which, btw, is awesome and I want more of it). I want trans and intersex readers to be safe, and this story is 1) about a cis man with a totally medically implausible vagina, and 2) could be a big trigger. If this would be an issue for you, please don't read! D: I want to make it really clear that this is not a story analogous to a trans experience in any way. It is also not a story about real (or even elective) medical transition. Also, Bucky's genitals being surgically altered does not mean his gender changed. Genitals do not equal gender; our binary rubric for deciding sex is pretty laughable, all told. 
> 
> An explanation of ["boypussy"](http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Boypussy/works), which is a cracky kink-meme thing: in the Glee fandom (I have a dark past), there was a huge amount of (inexplicable, usually handwaved) cis-boy-with-a-vagina stories. Boypussy!Kurt was the favorite. It's since spread to some other fandoms but not very many. My friend, who is as garbage as I am, enjoys this trope and really wanted to see it in the MCU fandom—specifically Bucky. I figured Hydra might be the sort of organization to experiment with genital modification on the Winter Soldier, who could ostensibly handle whatever risky, untested procedure they wanted to try on a whim. So, HTP backstory! Ish.
> 
> Anyway, after all of that tl;dr, I hope you enjoy! (Also, I included tags for everything that I think will come up, not just what's in the first chapter. And don't worry—there's no character death! And let me know if you feel like I missed a tag!)
> 
> Happy birthday, M.

_March, 2020_

"You know, if you wanted, you could stay behind on this one."

James didn't move under the weight of Steve's hand on his shoulder. Steve could feel the ridge of metal even under his tactical jacket. He looked at Steve levelly, seriously. "Why would I do that?"

James would reject the notion of having tells, but the perfect blankness on his face was enough of one. _Shit._ Maybe he'd forgotten. It would be another check on a long list if he had. "It's your birthday," Steve said. His tone struggled to meet low and careful, but it landed somewhere closer to awkward.

James nodded. Steve dropped his hand. They were standing near the door in the otherwise empty briefing room. It hadn't been smart to corner him near an open door, but James was up and moving the second Steve had said "dismissed", and catching him before he headed to the elevator and then the helicopter waiting on the roof was his only shot. "Yeah, I know. Why's it matter?"

If James _had_ forgotten Bucky Barnes's birthday, he did a good job of concealing it. The date was as good as any, in lieu of inventing one or picking something morbid, like the date of his capture by Hydra, which sounded like something James might do, actually. His humor was rare but was definitely of the straight-faced gallows variety. "Just thought you'd want the day off. Maybe you had plans."

"No plans." His mouth quirked at one corner. "Don't think I could fit that many candles on a cake."

Tony had tried, at Steve's hundredth. The candles probably would have set off the fire alarm if Jarvis hadn't been in charge of monitoring that sort of thing, and it had taken two of Steve's not insubstantial lungfuls of air to extinguish them. The cake had been a tiered mammoth wrapped in silky red, white, and blue fondant. He hadn't had the heart to tell Tony that fondant was absolutely disgusting. "No cake, but maybe we could get a drink when you're done with the mission?"

James shifted his weight in a way that brought him a few inches away from Steve. "Extraction could be in a couple days."

Steve shrugged. He was starting to regret asking, but he'd been dogged about including James when he was actively hunted and then when the Avengers had reconciled and refused to let him out of their sight. Letting up on that now would be pointless. "Sure," he allowed. "Think about it. You still haven't sharked me at pool, if I'm remembering right. Starting to think that was all talk."

"Trying too hard, Rogers." He jerked his chin toward the empty hallway. "Come get me after we land."

Steve just nodded and saw him out the door, despite the fact that inwardly he felt the clang and relief of victory.

* * *

It took three days for James and the rest of his team—Sam, Natasha, and Wanda—to put boots on the ground at the tower again, but James sent him a no-nonsense check-in once he was in his room.

Living at the tower was likely a concession to the truce between James and Tony—and Steve suspected James would have felt uneasy living somewhere unsecured anyway. He minimized civilian interaction as much as possible, and years ago, when Steve had first found him, he'd asked Steve to make sure he was _contained_ , if he needed to be.

Steve guessed the tower, with Jarvis and a handful of Avengers in it at any given time, was the best containment money could buy.

Steve sent off a text suggesting they meet the next night for drinks and pool at a bar just over the bridge in Brooklyn—because Steve liked it; it wasn't some new attempt at familiarizing James with the relics of his past.

 **Prepare to be sharked** , James texted in return.

* * *

Steve played two games and lost, but by a respectable margin, before James bent over the table and discarded the last of his nonchalance and handed Steve his ass. The easy posture he put on was as much a part of his disguise as the high-tech skin sleeve over his arm, though anyone who looked at Steve and James in close proximity or had ever watched the news could figure it out even without the exposed metal.

Steve whistled low and polished his cue with chalk. "You _were_ holding back, you sonofabitch."

"I promised a sharking," James said, shrugging despite the renewed tension in his shoulders.

Someone from the little crowd of onlookers they'd amassed clapped. He stood on James's side, steadily chugging three beers and making appreciative noises every time James had sunk an impressive shot.

"Nice game, Soldier," the guy said, when James cut a look back at him after the clapping. "You could teach a guy a thing or two."

"Thanks," James said. He tossed his cue onto the green felt and started to walk away. "Gotta hit the head."

Steve started setting up for another game, turning down a drink, and talked a little with a bartender on a break. The bar was crowded, and Steve had kept his brown leather jacket on, and sweat gathered under the collar, along his spine, and in the hollows of his armpits.

He turned down an offer for another game, and realized then with a moderate ping of alarm that it had been way, way too long for a trip to the head.

* * *

He found him outside, through the back door and into an alleyway, after an exhaustive search of the john and any conceivable hidey holes in the bar itself.

The blast of fresh air—relatively; an alley behind a bar smelled like dumpster and vomit—that hit his face came at the same moment as his realization that his phone was in his pocket, turned off against distractions. Maybe James had bailed and sent a text. It wouldn't be the first time he'd had to make a quick getaway for mysterious reasons.

But before he managed to get the phone out of his pocket to check, he heard the noise.

The filthy pavement, strewn with garbage and shining pieces of broken glass, wasn't much of a stealth aid, but Steve wasn't trying to conceal himself so much as not come barreling over like an overprotective wall of muscle.

Turned out that being light-footed was a good thing.

On the other side of the dingy green dumpster, James was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The man Steve recognized as his pool admirer was backed up against the building on the other side of the alley, his prick out and wet between his unzipped jeans, and James's jeans were pushed down too. Steve averted his eyes when he noticed.

The guy kissed him filthy, brief, in a hurry, and tried to manhandle James against the wall, which looked ridiculous since James was probably his size and a half.

But James turned to brace himself, with the concealed metal arm, and Steve saw a flash of his pale bare buttock.

He made his retreat as quiet as he could, heart thunderous in his ears.

* * *

He drank a Bud Lite to ground himself, the mildly bitter but overall forgettable taste reminding him of a time when he _used_ to be able to get drunk. Steve's hands never shook, not unless he was in the full grip of a fever back in the day, but it was a near thing right now.

By the time James came back into the bar, appearing near the pool table between one moment and the next like he'd blinked into existence, he smelled like smoke and soap from the bathroom, and he stared Steve down, dead-eyed, until he picked up the cue.

"Best of six?" he asked, in a tone to match his eyes.

Steve set the beer down and nodded.

* * *

He was never going to bring it up. It was, in the scheme of things, a small indignity. It would embarrass James to bring it up, he thought. When he'd seen Buck with a morning lift, or when he'd failed to fully close the door to the john and Steve had barged in on him, or even the time Steve had come home early to see rabbit-quick thrusting and truly over-the-top moaning on their couch in '41, Steve had let it go. He'd let it drift away.

No one liked the burn, the sharp edge, of embarrassment. He knew that intimately.

And screwing some guy in an alley was no big deal. People screwed; Buck had screwed. James clearly did. It just meant there was another thing standing between James and the soldier.

He hadn't expected the guy, but it was what it was.

He told himself that, but an unsettling crawling, itching sensation had taken root in his brain, of all places, which was impossible, and it kept starting up when he thought about Bucky. He found himself wondering, had Bucky made time with guys? At the docks? During the war?

Or maybe this was standing between James and Buck.

Whatever the case, he kept his mouth sealed shut like a tomb and met James's gaze whenever he had it. They went a week like that, carefully neutral. His questions almost calmed themselves down in that time.

But then, in one the communal kitchens in the tower at 0300 after an excruciating mission, bandaged and somewhat singed, James with his back to the fridge while Steve fried egg after endless egg so they could get some damn protein, James brought it up.

"I know you saw it."

Steve did not let his immediate reaction show in his shoulders. Kept it loose and easy as he transferred an egg to the plate. James had already eaten three eggs with his bare hand, wiped butter onto his pajama pants. "What'd I see?" Steve asked.

"You saw me and that guy in the alley."

Steve wet his lip and then nodded a few times. "I did. Not a big thing, James."

To his surprise, James snorted. That wasn't something he did often. His distaste was usually pretty contained to body language and quick expressions: flaring nostrils, a clenched jaw. "Yeah, thanks for the sentiment. We both know it's bullshit."

Steve switched the stove off. He still had a half carton of eggs uncooked, but this was too important to do while cooking. He'd feel like a chump. "I know I'm old, we're old, but men keeping company with men never hard for me to wrap my head around." Steve nearly smiled at how stupid that sounded, how little it really encompassed. "Surprised me, yeah, but it wouldn't be the first time you surprised me."

They didn't make a habit of talking about it. It had taken James two years to decide that he wanted to be called that, and it was the final push needed shut down Steve's drive to find ways to give more back to him. He stopped handling James with kid gloves and started treating him like a teammate. They had a good working relationship. He would call James a friend. His best friend was Sam, but in terms of people he trusted, James was a close second.

Being around him nearly every day kept some secret, buried part of Steve warm. He'd spent years mourning Bucky, but James kept him from falling into a well of it.

"I can't tell if you're lying to me," James said, sounding odd, and Steve let his gaze linger. He was white, and not just because of some blood loss and post-mission exhaustion. He looked grim. His dirty hair was hanging forward, covering his cheeks and a day's worth of beard growth. He looked like hell. He looked more like the soldier than he had in a while—though the soldier had never really looked so human, in pajama pants and a ribbed sweater Wanda had gotten him.

"Ain't lying," he said. He sounded, Steve reflected, like an impression of himself sometimes.

"You don't give a shit that I fuck men, fine, but you got nothing else to say? Really?"

Steve spread his hands. The bandage on his left pulled. "What do you want me to say? Bucky—you never did before, as far as I know."

James jerked his shoulder in an impatient shrug. "Too chickenshit. That's not what I'm asking you, Rogers."

Steve was baffled. "Well, fine. I don't know what you're asking either?"

James studied him, eyes working hard in his still face, back and forth as he weighed Steve's sincerity. It was the only movement in his whole tense body. Finally, he slumped. He pressed the palm of the metal hand against his forehead and said quietly, "Fuck."

Steve waited it out.

"You didn't see?"

Steve rewound the conversation a few times and came up with nothing useful. "I saw you and a guy about to screw in an alley. Not much else. I figured people want privacy for that sort of thing," he said, twisting a smile to try to make it at least a little funny, though it wasn't.

James laughed. It was a dry, humorless noise that took even more of the fight out of him. "Well, shit."

There was something—Steve had entertained the thought before, but now it hit him again with an edge of accusation instead of guilt. "Did you _plan_ for me to catch you?"

"Obviously," James said dismissively.

"Why the hell would you do that?"

"Figured it'd put it all on the table."

"Jesus. Not for nothing, but a conversation would have done that."

James leaned back against the fridge, arms folded across his stomach and one ankle crossed over another. "Talking's harder than a demonstration."

"For you, maybe," Steve said, trying not to sound appalled.

"Rogers—Steve. Listen. I…Did you read my file?"

"Your file? Natasha gave me a copy she wrestled out of Kiev, back when I was trying to find you."

"That doesn't mean shit. I'm asking you to be straight with me. Do you know?"

Steve figured his confused silence, so complete it seemed suffocating in the space around them, was answer enough, but he spoke anyway. "I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about."

James swore again, meaningfully. He tilted his head forward, chin closer to his chest, so there was almost a total curtain between his face and Steve's gaze. "I wasn't trying to show you I was queer. The guy, he was just—I thought maybe you'd read the right file and were just too goddamned noble to say anything. I wanted to know. I wanted to tell you. It doesn't matter. I shouldn't have done it."

Whatever had James so tied up in knots that he was shrinking into himself, Steve knew he had to get it out. They didn't talk man to man often, but they could, if James wanted to tell him something this big. "You wanted to tell me. So tell me," he said.

James laughed again. Steve was getting sick of that sound. "I thought maybe someone on fucking earth aside from Hydra scumbags and my doctors should know. My bright ideas. Anyway"—he puffed out a breath that stirred his hair, and his tone changed, brisker, like he was dragging it all out at once—"Hydra used me as a guinea pig for all sorts of shit, as anyone with a brain can guess." This was the most he'd heard James say at once almost ever, and Steve found himself fascinated. He leaned forward, gripping the counter near the stove. "Drugs, mostly, seeing what worked on me and what didn't. New vaccines that might kill someone normal. Experimental surgical shit. A lot," he huffed again, "of surgical shit."

"Okay," Steve said slowly. It was, as James had said, what anyone would expect. It was why Steve had taken care to raze every Hydra cell he found into the ground. People said he was married to his job, but he did most of it on autopilot now, living for moments of comradery and accomplishment to take home with him.

Grinding Hydra under his boot gave Steve special pleasure.

"I have no idea what fucking wayward hair made them want to do it, but they brought me for maintenance at the end of the 70s and put me under to fuck around some more. When I woke up in '81, I had a brand new piece of equipment."

Steve thought for a moment that he meant a new arm.

James lifted his head and stared right at Steve. "They gave me a cunt, Rogers. Oh, goddamn."

He felt nothing but horror as he watched James splinter in front of him for a few moments, bringing a hand to his mouth like he might be able to stuff the words back in. He shook his head and his shoulders were trembling too, and a couple stray sounds came out of his mouth.

Then the meaning sunk in instead of his worry, and Steve felt a strange nothingness crash over him like a row of doors slamming shut against emotion. It was like he closed down. It was too big for him to carry.

But James had trusted him to carry it.

So Steve swallowed a few times, adjusted his grip on the counter, and said in a low voice, "I'm glad you trusted me."

James shook his head again. "Well, I'm not. It didn't do shit."

"I won't—I won't talk to you about it unless you talk to me. I won't tell anyone. I won't…I'll just keep cracking Hydra skulls like normal." And AIM, and every two-bit threat that popped up for the Avengers to knock back down. "It's not going to change things."

James managed to look at Steve, or at least Steve's chin. "Thanks, Rogers. You're a gem." He finished with a smile they both knew was pathetic. "I'm going to bed. Thanks for the eggs."

* * *

To his surprise, living with more knowledge of what Hydra had done to Bucky—to James—wasn't some heavy weight. He was already furious. He was already bowing under the fury; adding more to the pile didn't mean much.

Anyway, James hadn't told Steve for him to walk around feeling sorry for him. He could do that privately, but it had no place in his day-to-day. He counted himself lucky, and sad, and queasy that James had no one to tell—maybe the people he had sex with knew, but Steve didn't know if he'd been with anyone but the guy in the alley.

He hoped he had. Bucky'd had sex, a comfortable amount for an unmarried young man, and then seemed to stop entirely during the war. Not that anyone else was getting much out of anything that wasn't their dominant hand. Some men found women up for fun despite the bombed-out buildings surrounding them, during stops in France or wherever, but Bucky and Steve abstained, Steve too starry-eyed over Peggy to think about anyone else. He wasn't a fool.

Bucky was fine for a drink and a hand of cards and some casual insubordination, but he kept his attention on his gun and Steve's six. If there were opportunities, he never took them.

 _Too chickenshit_ , James had said, with the dismissiveness of surety. The words sometimes looped in Steve's head if he sat around and let himself think. He didn't know precisely what that meant. He remembered Bucky was too chicken to try it with men? Or _he_ went with men and just assumed?

It didn't matter either way.

Steve knew what it was like to keep desire close to the chest, even if he'd never gone beyond stray and somewhat desperate thoughts of seeing if men would like him more at a queer bar than women seemed to at a dance hall. He'd blinked when he found out about gay rights when he'd come out of the ice, but that was all it had been—a blink. He'd made his stance clear as Cap and the world went back to business as usual.

Steve hadn't been out with anyone since Sharon a few years ago. He was in no position to speculate on the state of someone's love life. If James wanted to screw men, if Bucky had wanted to but never acted on it, it was his own business.

If James was carving a life for himself despite the pall of Bucky Barnes and Hydra and his own damn body hanging over him, all Steve could feel was fiercely gratified. He deserved it.

And Steve knowing seemed to unlock something in James, or between them: when people were quipping on comms—Tony—or bragging—Sam, usually, doing some new impossible move with his wings—James spoke now, low observations or rebuttals and not just his bland check-ins. Instead of telling everyone to shut their damn mouths every five minutes, Steve spoke back. When he got Natasha to laugh at one of their back-and-forths, he knew things had changed and that it wasn't wishful thinking on his part.

Their coordinated fighting didn't improve, but it didn't really have room to. No one as highly trained and observant as the Winter Soldier would let himself lag behind Captain America. And maybe there was some old muscle memory at work there.

True to his word, Steve never brought it up. He put it to rest alongside his memories of Bucky, his mourning for Peg, in that place where everything irrelevant went. He gave James hell over the comms and suggested Thai places he might want to try and invited him places with Sam. Sometimes James took him up on it, and frequently he didn't—he didn't seem to much like the outdoors—but the gaping distance between them had been narrowed.

It was enough.

He hoped it was enough for James.

* * *

_January, 2021_

Russia was a bad omen.

It was just a shitty place in general. Steve hadn't spent much time in it, just for a few missions, but it was almost mythical in his mind: Natasha's origin story, James's brainwashing at the hands of Hydra, Putin and Czars and the Trans-Siberian Railway cutting through miles and miles of nothing, and snow, snow, snow.

He was right about the nothing and the snow. Steve had racked up what seemed like endless hours bundled in cumbersome winter gear waiting for extraction at various locations.

There was almost no wind today, which was a blessing. Sam was overhead, despite concerns over the cold potentially affecting his wings, and Tony was herding up all the Hydra goons so that they could bring them out in a line once backup arrived. James was on the roof. Steve always felt slightly more at ease when James was peering through a scope.

But the bleakness of the snow in front of him—knee-deep or higher where it wasn't cleared away on the road—was unsettling, and Steve's eyes stung and watered. He wished he'd worn goggles like Sam. His nose felt like ice had crystallized inside of it.

"I hate this weather," Steve said idly, shaking his head at an expanse of still white so brilliant it hurt his eyes. "I wish it would storm. It's unsettling."

"Should have stayed inside where it's warm, Rogers," Tony said, amused. "Nice and toasty in here."

"Going for another pass," Sam said, actually doing his job.

"Roger. Soldier, you got anything?" Steve asked.

"Negative."

"I bet our resident Ruskie is loving the cold. How about it, o' famed solider of winter? Feeling at home in your element?" Tony asked. His dubiousness when it came to James had morphed into a particularly sharp but comfortable level of ribbing. Despite the fact that James used Winter Soldier as his call sign, something about the way Tony said it occasionally put him on edge.

Or it could have been that Tony seemed to have taken their entry into Moscow five days earlier as permission to unleash a barrage of references that Steve was not invested in Googling. James only sounded bemused right back, and so Steve had only told him to shove it once or twice.

"Yep. It reminds me of when my handlers would haul me out of the gulag every Christmas and give me all the pelmeni and cabbage soup I could eat. I definitely feel nostalgic."

Steve let himself drop his head and laugh silently. Tony, still herding miserable people toward what they probably considered their impending doom, stopped barking orders long enough to congratulate James on holding himself back from defecting.

Sam was done with his next fly-by when Steve heard the distant rumble of trucks. They didn't want to bring a jet this far into nowhere with so many places it could be shot down, so heavily armored and weaponized ground transport was their best bet.

"Evac's a couple minutes out," Steve said.

"Thank God," Sam said. "If I have to listen—"

The sound of a high-velocity armor-piercing bullet hurtling in his direction was so alarming it seemed to swallow up most other noise, and Steve made an attempt to duck, draw his shield, and call out a warning—but the bullet caught him in the leg.

The next hit his chest. He dropped the shield to the ground.

James said something over comms as Steve, lying on the freezing ground with the wind knocked out of him and a dizzy, terrifying awareness of pain about to set in, stared up at the white sky.

"Cap is down," James said, in a gritty, furious voice, before Steve heard the distinctive ping of his shots. "Falcon, Stark, there's a convoy."

"On it," Tony said, just as clipped. He whizzed past Steve's prone body near the entrance of the bunker and out onto the road.

Steve closed his eyes. The bullet had clearly missed his heart, and he pawed a gloved hand up to try to determine the damage, and out of some instinctive need to touch. This was probably not good, but he was alive. He could breathe.

Or at least he thought he could. He realized he was tensed, holding his breath with shock, and let it out in an agonized moan.

"Rogers!" He heard the crush of snow under boots and then James was standing over him, black goggles shoved up to his forehead and pale pink rings around his eyes where they'd sat before.

"I'm good," he said, despite the fact that he was having trouble drawing in a breath and thought about the kind of damage that a bullet to the chest did, ripping and liquefying and shattering—

"Don't speak." James stripped off his gloves—and where was his rifle? Had he left it on the roof? Had he jumped down from the roof?—and pressed Steve's chest. "Christ, Cap, you are not doing this in fucking Russia."

"I'm not dyin'…in Russia," Steve agreed. He knew he wasn't going to stay conscious much longer. "Hey," he said, almost silent with his lack of air. He caught James's bare hand with his bloody glove. "It's okay."

James stared down at him, and he'd looked determined before, but now he was wide-eyed and panicked, his dark hair pushed behind his right ear framed against the white sky, gray eyes piercing. He looked almost nothing like Bucky Barnes with his tight face, his wrinkles and furrows.

The pain he felt was acute, a realization that he'd stopped mourning Bucky just long enough to _start_ getting to know James Barnes.

Steve put his gloved hand on James's cheek. He wished he'd taken it off so he could feel skin. It would have been nice. And he dimly noted he was smearing red all over James's face.

"Do not _fucking_ do this, Steve," James said, and dipped forward to make a feral sound and to touch his forehead to Steve's. Steve, confused and not able to find the words, touched and probably dying, kissed his cheek clumsily. "I need medics _now_. Tony, you need—"

He slipped down between one word and the next, aching with how he wanted to tell James that he knew, he knew who he was, that he was sorry, that he forgave him for not being Bucky.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO, sorry about the delayed update, but that's pretty standard for me. I'm usually drowning in my day job. 
> 
> Also: please ignore the glaring logistical error in chapter one that I am too lazy to fix. Please ignore this note if you never noticed it in the first place.
> 
> Also also: this will only take into account the Civil War canon that is most convenient for me.
> 
> As always, please heed the warnings and let me know if I need to add more! I don't want to harm someone with my dumpster fire of an idfic.

The first time he woke up, he thought he was dead.

But death wasn't a crashing wave of agony. Death wasn't screaming. Death wasn't screaming that only came out as broken, animal moans.

He saw nothing but harsh light and a blur of movement and loud anxious voices talking all at once. Distantly, there was beeping.

He heard his own name.

* * *

The second time he woke up, he had to paddle up to consciousness like he was stuck at the bottom of a murky, muck-filled lake. Steve kept his eyes closed and listened to the steady beeps, the whirring of machines, the air forced in and out of his chest.

Someone pushed drugs into his IV line in a hurry before the pain could set in, and he went back under.

* * *

The third time, his whole body felt like he'd been pushed through a meat grinder. It didn't feel human, but this time the noise he made sounded it.

Someone said his name, and Steve turned his head toward the sound.

His eyes peeled open like they'd been taped shut.

Sam was sitting there, almost an apparition to Steve's fuzzy, agonized mind.

"Hey," Steve managed, more of a huff of air than a word. He had no idea if he was still intubated; what he could feel of everything below his neck—or maybe his brain—was strange encompassing pain, so severe it overrode his awareness of individual limbs.

Sam wavered and said something else. 

* * *

He woke again, eventually, mouth dry and brow furrowed, and groaned aloud.

Whatever had happened to him was worse than anything that had happened before.

Steve tried to remember what it was, but the last clear memory he had was white, cold white, and James's face smeared with blood. James's eyes so wide and scared that it felt like he'd never seen him before, like his face was brand new.

Wonderful.

"You want some water?"

That was James's voice, and Steve pried his eyes open to see James in startling clarity, sitting in the same chair Sam had been in, with a book in his lap.

"Yes," Steve rasped. 

But two nurses came in and spent the next few minutes checking his vitals, asking him how he felt, giving him reassuring smiles, and once one of them left, the other asked if he knew where he was.

Their accents weren't Russian, but he guessed Russia regardless.

In answer, she beamed another smile down at him as she fiddled with one of the tubes coming out of his body. Steve tried glancing down, but all he saw was a hospital gown and the top of a very thick layer of bandages that constricted most of his torso.

"Do you want another dose?" the nurse asked. "No one would blame you if you wanted to go back to sleep."

It didn't sound like a terrible idea, but Steve had been close enough to a murky, endless bottom to appreciate treading water at the top. Plus he could see James just beyond the nurse, sitting silently with his book and a cup on the wheeled tray in front of him.

"I'm fine. I'll let you know. Thank you."

Each word was hard, but he managed.

"You can just press this button"—she carefully placed something into Steve's hand, which he fumbled his fingers around—"to increase your dose."

"Thanks."

"Don't be brave, Captain Rogers," she said, before making her quiet exit.

James moved out of his chair and shook the cup—from the sound of it, only filled with ice—so Steve could see it. He reached out a hand to grab it to spare them both from the awkwardness of James trying to maneuver ice into his mouth.

The cold was so shocking that he caught his next breath, but then the melting liquid covered his tongue and he nearly closed his eyes over how good it felt. 

"Glad to see you up."

Steve worked the ice around his mouth and swallowed a few times before pushing it into his cheek. "How bad was it?"

"Bad."

James sat down again, looking steadily at Steve. His expression was almost blank, but it wasn't hard. The memory of James's terrified eyes—and the distant, half-remembered feeling of painful fondness for him—seemed almost like they couldn't have happened.

But James looked like he was held together by his jacket and coffee and maybe tape. There were bags under his eyes, and his hair was greasy.

"Bullets missed your heart, but they shattered three of your ribs and pulverized almost everything else. I think they've bumped up your status as a medical miracle."

That sounded so bad Steve almost couldn't wrap his head around it, but considering how awful he felt, it made sense.

"How long?"

"Six days ago. Stark basically flew you into Moscow. Surgery for eleven hours."

If Steve's lips hadn't been cracking with dryness, he would have tried to whistle. "Sounds like I got lucky."

"You may be right." He stood, abruptly, like he hadn't planned on it, and his grip clenched around the hardcover of his book. "I'm going to head out. I'll see you when you get out of this godforsaken country."

"Sure," said Steve, a little confused, but James was sometimes like this. He popped up and disappeared like a magician. They didn't have a lot of extended conversation.

And when they did, Steve reflected, it wasn't always pretty.

He considered watching some TV, but the throb in his body was turning to a roar, and his eyelids wanted to drag themselves shut after a while. Steve dutifully pushed the button, and almost immediately he felt the chilled rush of the drug entering his vein.

* * *

"Man, Natasha sent you a teddy bear. She never sent me a teddy bear."

Sam plunked the Cap Bear, with its disproportionately large plastic shield, down next to Steve's meal tray, shaking his head. Steve wobbled the Jell-O in his cup and sucked a trembling red chunk into his mouth.

"You had an appendectomy."

"Excuses. Widow's playing favorites."

"Yeah," Steve said. 

Sam looked a sight better than Bucky had, like he'd showered and shaved. Sam and Steve both felt better when they looked cleaned up, he knew.

"You got a parade of visitors yet?"

"Just James, you, and Wanda." Her visit had been brief, the night before. She'd looked stiff, like the sight of him in the bed unsettled her. But she'd been there, and that was what counted. "Tony's going to come by when I'm released, fly me home. I think hospitals give him the creeps."

"I feel that." Sam looked around the room—private, with a huge window that let in winter sunlight that never seemed too harsh, that didn't smell like too much antiseptic even to Steve's nose, and with a halfway comfortable bed—and frowned. "I hope Stark's paying for this."

"He is." He shifted cautiously, trying to scoot up the bed into a more upright position, and his ribs twinged with a sharp edge, but it wasn't worth another dose increase. Steve liked being awake. "I can probably afford it, though."

Sam nodded. He put his hands on his knees and squeezed once. It was something Steve had seen him do at the VA a few times, before he quit. It was his counselor thing.

"So, docs say you're making incredible progress—color me unsurprised. They say you're gonna get out of here in a few days—unsurprised. They say you've already tried to get out of bed ten times." He leveled a look at Steve.

"If I'm getting out in a few days, I should be moving around." The look intensified. "I hate being in bed. I want to at least pee like a human."

Sam snorted at that. "Yeah, well, you'll have plenty of time for that. Jesus, Steve. We need to look into bulletproofing your uniform."

"I wouldn't want to step on T'Challa's toes," Steve joked, but Sam kept going like he hadn't said anything.

"You scared the shit out of all of us." He rubbed a hand over his jaw tiredly, and Steve sensed the conversation had shifted from a thin veneer of casual camaraderie to the desperate relief of someone coming back from death's door.

His ma and Bucky and their priest'd had quite a few conversations like that. They'd mostly talked at Steve, who had been prone in bed most of the time and hadn't known what to say, because he'd been unconscious for the worst of it. It didn't feel any better now than it had then, but Steve owed Sam his piece.

He'd smuggled Steve a candy bar, too.

"Lost your pulse a few times on the way over. You read your file?"

Steve nodded. It was gruesome, terrible, and he'd only survived because of the serum, incredible medical skill, and perhaps divine intervention.

"They tell you one of your lungs had to regrow?"

Jesus. Steve shook his head.

"It was bad, Steve." He seemed like he was going to say something else but stopped himself. "You were really lucky. I'm really fucking relieved to see your big ass in that bed, making bad jokes."

"I'm glad I'm here too, Sam."

"Not half as glad as Barnes, I bet. He offer to give you a sponge bath?"

Steve blinked. "He gave me some ice."

"Oh, that's cute. He lived in your room once they let you out of surgery."

He had a feeling Sam was very tired, because for all he liked to rib James, he didn't go around talking about everyone's business. Sam could keep his mouth shut to a point where it was infuriating. He refused to so much as pass on a message. _Man, tell 'em yourself._

"That's...nice."

"I'm not kidding when I say it scared all of us. We were acting crazy. He offered up like half his organs in case you needed them. Hell, so did I."

Steve felt a burning behind his eyes, another strong punch of fondness and embarrassment he wanted to wriggle away from. "You should go get some sleep," he said.

"Yeah, whatever. Wanted to see you eat your Jell-O."

"Thanks for all of it." He paused. "Thanks for nobly offering up your useless kidneys."

"Ha fucking ha. See if I do you any favors, Rogers."

Sam came close and clapped his shoulder, dug his fingers in, stared down at Steve's face for a second. 

"Good to see you, brother," he said.

* * *

They wheeled Steve up to the roof in a wheelchair, and Tony was waiting at the end of the quinjet ramp looking at his watch.

Steve, whose knees were basically to his chest, glared when Tony barked a laugh.

"Take a picture," he groused, but accepted Tony's hand to stand up. It still didn't feel one hundred percent great to change positions, but his body was on its way to feeling like his own again.

Steve thanked the nurse and then followed Tony inside, where he sat down and buckled up.

"Just you?" he asked, a little surprised. Sam had been called to Wakanda with Wanda—who was there more often than not—and Nat was still off somewhere mysterious, but after ten days in a hospital Steve was feeling selfish enough to want a welcoming committee.

"I told them all to send you cards. You know how it is, Avenging."

"Yeah," Steve sighed. 

Tony settled himself into the pilot's seat and fiddled with the controls until the quinjet sealed itself up. He was wearing a crisp gray suit, sunglasses on, buttoned up and polished like Tony Stark going into battle without the iron.

"Where to, Cap? The compound? Barbados?"

Steve thought for a minute. It would be nice to see some sun after the freeze of Russia. "Who all's in Wakanda?"

"Sam, Wanda, Vision—like a loyal puppydog—His Royal Catness, Barnes, and everyone else if you decide that's where you wanna go for your mandatory vacation."

Steve groaned and laughed but was already resigned to a few weeks—he refused to extend it longer than that—as a total civilian. "Wakanda it is."

"Great. We'll make you a Mai Tai, set you up in a hammock. Barnes can fan you with one of those huge fans. Wilson can cry at your feet."

Harsh, even for Tony, but Steve knew they were all unbalanced. He'd nearly died. It wasn't all about him; all he was carrying was a vague memory or two and a lot of lingering discomfort that would heal up pretty fast. That seemed like the better end of the stick, all told. 

"What're you gonna do?" 

"Oh, you know. Take advantage of T'Challa's considerable resources, try to steal valuable IP, the usual." The quinjet lifted itself off the roof like a bird taking flight. Tony spun his seat around, not concerned with things like seatbelts. "Being around him must be the kind of star-struck awe people feel around me. He is _rich_."

"Feeling outclassed?" Steve asked, raising an eyebrow. He was tired, but the quinjet wasn't great for sleeping. He might be able to doze a little, if he popped one of the souped-up tablets designed especially for his metabolic system.

Tony scoffed. "Feeling spoiled. You have no idea how wonderful it is to have someone else pick up the tab. I'd have defected to your side much earlier if I'd known T'Challa was going to bankroll you."

Steve smiled again and rested his head against the back of his seat.

"I've got movies if you get bored. I even loaded up a soothing nature documentary. You like orcas?"

"I love 'em," Steve said, only half kidding. High-def nature documentaries were one of the best things about living in this century.

"Great, great." Tony pressed a button and a still frame of the documentary appeared in the air, projected from who knew what. "Let me know if you want snacks. It'll be a few hours."

"Thanks, Tony."

* * *

Stepping off the air-conditioned, stale quinjet into sweet-smelling humid heat felt like nothing else. Steve paused a moment to draw in a ginger lungful and then reluctantly headed for the roof entrance. In the distance, he could see the sharp edges of the panther statue, keeping watch. Some part of him wanted to give a little wave; it felt like a bodyguard, and T'Challa had told Steve it concealed a heavy cannon, so technically it was.

Inside was less of the sunshine, sterile and temperature controlled but still lovely. They had several floors of the compound to themselves, and Tony had a lab he could use.

Steve wondered, as he leaned against the elevator wall, if he'd see T'Challa at all. They only crossed paths occasionally, even when Steve was in Wakanda's borders for a long stretch. But T'Challa was a king, and kings were not beholden to entertaining a bunch of troublemaking guests. He was running a country—and protecting it.

T'Challa wasn't an Avenger. He wasn't really a friend, either. He got along well with James and Nat and with Wanda; he was polite enough to Steve and Sam; and he and Tony had a mutually bemused and competitive relationship, but in some ways he felt like a benevolent landlord, or maybe a patron. They could use this facility, use Wakanda as a safe haven, so long as they helped with any local disaster, big or small, and kept their noses in their own business otherwise. 

Tony had once grudgingly offered to pay rent but T'Challa had just smiled, almost imperceptibly, and said that he'd be the only one able to afford it.

Wanda was in the communal kitchen when Steve, who was on his way to the bedroom he'd claimed as his own, passed by it. He stopped and watched her; her forehead was scrunched as she worked painstakingly to—frost a cake.

Steve chuckled and reached for the glass door that would let him inside the kitchen.

There was a member of T'Challa's staff getting coffee at the espresso machine, but she paid them no mind. Wanda had on an apron, and she startled when she looked up and saw Steve there.

"Oh," she said. The frosting knife she'd been carefully levitating fell to the counter with a clatter. Why she hadn't used her actual hands he'd never know. "You're here."

"You made a cake."

"I needed something to do," she said, but she looked happy, relieved, and Steve came closer to give her the chance to hug him if she wanted.

She did, a brief press with her soft, fragrant hair almost in his nose.

"Is the cake for me?" he asked. Wanda was one of the best cooks in the Avengers, since it was something she stubbornly worked at. Everyone else lived on take out, sandwiches, whatever they could scrounge when they weren't lazy, protein shakes, and occasionally meals Tony paid for. T'Challa had a staff but no one had dared ask him for the privilege of borrowing them.

She nodded and nudged it to him, then tasted the frosting from a nearby bowl. "It's good. Coffee frosting. Ganache. We are supposed to leave Natasha at least two slices."

"I can't believe you made me a cake," he said, marvelling, and dipped into the bowl himself. Aside from the lone candy bar Sam had smuggled him, Steve hadn't had food that, strictly speaking, could be called delicious in a while. He wasn't even big on sugar, but something about cake seemed decadent. 

Sick people didn't eat cake.

"She's not getting any of this," Steve declared. "Everyone will have to fight me for it."

"I made two," she said. "One for us, the other for them to fight over."

"You're a gem," he said, and settled himself on a stool while she cut herself a piece and then him. It was weird to have her being so solicitous, and it seemed like it might be weird for her too, but it was still nice.

They ate in silence for a while, but then she started telling him about the work she and Sam had done in the aftermath of a flood. There were plenty of people in Wakanda trained in disaster relief, but none of them could fly or move objects with their mind, so she and Sam had done a lot of heavy lifting for them.

"James got here on the last day and he just slept, which means he did not earn his own cake."

"He still here?" Steve asked, unsettled but pleased to know James had finally gotten some sleep. He'd looked rough in Steve's hospital room.

The unsettling part was seeing James like that. His exhaustion had belied his totally calm expression. And Steve still had the drifting thought of his eyes, wide, and the unbearable moment when Steve had thought he was dying. That one was hard to look at head-on.

"Yes. He spends most of his time in the gym. Or checking on his potatoes."

James had tried several times to cultivate a garden. His failures were either because of underestimating the climate or having to take off at a moment's notice for a mission. T'Challa had offered to build and staff a greenhouse, because T'Challa liked James the most out of anyone but Nat, but James had declined. He wanted to do it himself, apparently. In the elements.

"He loves coffee stuff," Steve said, forking himself another bite. "I'll have to really talk this cake up."

Wanda smiled at him, a crumb of chocolate cake on her lip that she wiped away, and cut herself a second small slice when Steve demurred.

* * *

The next day, after a long night of sleep in an actual bed, the fancy kind he could adjust to the amount of firmness he liked best, Steve got up and wandered into a reading nook. It was basically in a hallway, right next to a huge window, and he kept looking up from his tablet to the view outside, lush and green for endless miles.

Sam came to grab him for lunch, and he looked much better than he had, ribbing Steve when he took a long time to follow Sam back to the kitchen.

They had pulled-pork sandwiches and a salad and coleslaw and a mound of fries between them. He had no idea who'd managed that but decided to count his blessings.

"You seen Barnes yet?" Sam asked, wiping sauce from his chin.

"No. I'll find him today, maybe."

Sam didn't say anything else, just started chewing his next mouthful of sandwich. The transparency from the hospital room was gone like Steve had thought it would be. 

"I saw him in the hospital," Steve said, out of some odd defensiveness. He pushed a bite of coleslaw around. It wasn't his favorite; reminded him too much of salads his ma had tried to make but fallen short of. "Why, is something up?"

"No," Sam said, slowly. "Just asking. And telling you not to run off and start sparring him until you're cleared."

"How stupid do you think I am?"

Sam chose not to answer that.

* * *

It was entirely possible Steve was imbuing meaning into things that didn't merit it, but all signs seemed to be pointing at James. First what he remembered when he'd been shot, the uncomfortable cauldron of thoughts and feelings it had stirred in him, and then how terrible James had looked, how blank he'd been, and what Sam had said.

_He lived in your room once they let you out of surgery._

_He offered up like half of his organs in case you needed them._

That one made him a little mad. Like Steve was worth giving up a vital organ. Serum or no serum, Winter Soldier or no Winter Soldier, James needed to keep all of his damn organs where they were. Steve wouldn't know how he'd feel about carrying them around inside of him. His spleen, maybe, but anything life-saving?

He didn't want that from anyone, let alone James, who'd already seen enough surgery, enough taken from him, to last a hundred lifetimes.

But whatever was going on, Steve was going to nip it in the bud now. He didn't like walking around with the memory of James' stubble against his lips, James' panic so thick he could sense it emanating from him, and then pretending like that didn't mean unfinished business.

He typically gave James space, and he'd back off if he said the word, but Steve wasn't going to sit on something this important. 

Not when his whole understanding of James had been flipped on its head. He needed to be a better friend, anyway, and what better time to start?

They said people turned over a new leaf after near-death experiences.

He found James wailing on a practice dummy, punches so hard it nearly split open, and he was lucky it was bolted to the floor.

Steve leaned against the wall not so much to look casual but because walking that distance still felt a little odd. He was getting the slow burn of impatience with himself, wanted to hurry up and heal, that he'd spent the first twenty plus years of his life dealing with.

"You're up," James said, breathing hard, between punches.

His hair was drawn up in a haphazard ponytail, or maybe it was more of a bun. His black T-shirt was soaked with sweat. He could really invest in some Under Armour.

"Up and at 'em."

"You're not here to spar," James said flatly, like he doubted it and disapproved, and Steve raised his gaze to the ceiling in exasperation.

"Contrary to popular opinion, I don't actually want to put myself back in the hospital. You'll have to hand my ass to me next week."

"Good." He grunted when the dummy gave an ominous creak and then moved on to the speed bag, where his arms turned into a flesh-and-metal blur. 

"You have any of Wanda's cake?"

"She gave me a piece, yeah."

This was lower than Steve expectations had been. They hadn't been this distant since the first month James had been resolute that they not call him Bucky—and had been bland and monotone, but tense, as if someone might argue with him. 

"Thanks for checking on me in the hospital. It was nice to wake up and see a friendly face."

James didn't lose his rhythm, but Steve thought he caught some minute shift in his posture, like he was put off or surprised. "Nice to see you moving."

Steve didn't want to act like a bulldozer, but he wasn't going to do them any favors by playing the same game, the same arm's length, barely scratching the surface shit. If James didn't want anything to do with him beyond friendly teammates, well—

That didn't seem likely. Not after what Steve knew and what he'd seen on James' face in Russia.

They could both man up and deal with some honesty.

"Sam said you were in there every day."

James did slow down, long enough to wipe sweat from his face. His hands weren't wrapped. Steve winced to think of the microfractures in his fingers, but the serum would heal them fast enough.

"Sure," James said, flitting his shuttered gaze to Steve's for a second. Something about it was a challenge, and Steve's spine straightened.

"Look, I want to thank you for being a good friend. I'm not trying to have a heart to heart."

That might not have been strictly true.

"What, you have some transformative near-death experience? I'm sure as shit glad you're not dead. It's not pleasant to watch someone go down like that."

"I'm saying I know I haven't always done right by you—"

James jerked his attention away from the bag for a second. "Oh, Christ."

"—but you've been doing good by me. I know who you are, and I like you as who you are." That was about the most awkward way he could put it, but Steve felt an uncomfortable flush starting up and it was hard to look at James and say this, well after the initial moment where he'd realized all of this had happened. "I just wanted you to know that."

James stopped punching, one hand on the bag to halt it. He didn't say anything for a few moments. "Thanks," he said eventually.

"I want to be friends with you. Not the person you think you have to be most of the time."

James, still staring straight ahead, or maybe at nothing, nodded. It looked a little stiff. "Sure," he said.

"I mean, you only kiss your friends, right?" Steve said, propelled by the kneejerk urge to make a joke about it, to make it a dare, but also to proclaim it just to make sure it had actually happened. 

And that it had been as important as it had felt like, as he'd laid there bleeding out.

James froze totally. Then he dropped his hand from the punching bag. "I don't know what kind of friends you have," he said shortly. But he rolled his shoulders like he was forcing himself to relax. "Go bother someone else, Rogers. We can be friends when I'm not trying to work out."

"I was gonna save you another piece of cake, but you had to go and ruin it."

"Get," James said, with a flicker of amusement, turning toward the next piece of equipment.

Steve, something unspooling in his sore chest, ducked his chin to hide his smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is supposed to be framing for porn and some variety of relationship whump, but instead it's just... endless slow burn... Why.


End file.
